Construction companies in Washington State: 27,190 contractors, 68,612 active registrations and the public works paper trail

This report is for owners and public agencies choosing contractors anywhere in Washington, contractors looking for subcontractors or teaming partners, and B2B sellers covering the state. It covers the statewide numbers, the split between the Puget Sound and the rest of the state, what Washington's registration and public works files show, and how to use them. For the registration rules themselves (classifications, bonds and insurance), see the Seattle construction companies report.

Washington construction by the numbers

US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, construction sector (NAICS 23), State of Washington:

Average pay is about $6,550 above the $76,580 average across all states and ranks 11th (our calculation from the CBP state file). No SEC-registered listed construction company has its business address in Washington.

Puget Sound and the rest of the state

King, Snohomish and Pierce together have 13,610 establishments, half the state. Clark County belongs to the Portland metro and Spokane County anchors the east; the local reports cover Portland and Vancouver and Spokane. Benton County is the size outlier, with 712 establishments averaging 11.9 employees, against 5.4 in Kitsap. Ten more establishments are coded statewide with no county.

In broader bands: 24,941 establishments (91.7%) have 1 to 19 employees, 1,941 have 20 to 99 and 308 have 100 or more.

What CBP counts. Establishments are locations with paid employees, not companies, and self-employed contractors without payroll are left out, which is why the registration count below is so much higher.

What Washington's contractors do

Finishing trades (drywall, painting, flooring, tile and carpentry) are the largest group of trade establishments, while plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors employ the most people. Highway contractors average 44 employees and commercial builders 22.

The registration file, by the numbers

L&I publishes its contractor license and registration data on the state's open data portal, with the business name, registration number, type, specialty, address, business structure and status. On 30 October 2026 it showed:

The largest specialties are painting and wallcovering (2,305), floor covering and countertops (1,878), landscaping (1,522) and tile and stone (1,006). Another 3,723 active registrations have Oregon addresses and 1,360 Idaho addresses, a reminder that border-county markets draw contractors from next door. Expired, suspended and out-of-business records stay in the file, so filter on status.

Public works: the prevailing wage paper trail

On any Washington public works project, every contractor and subcontractor must file a Statement of Intent to Pay Prevailing Wages with L&I after award, file weekly certified payroll online at least monthly, and file an Affidavit of Wages Paid before the agency accepts the work or releases retainage. To bid as a responsible bidder, primes and subcontractors must take L&I's public works and prevailing wage training unless they have been in business three or more years and completed three or more public works projects.

L&I publishes the intents as open data, including the awarding agency, project, contract amount, the filing contractor and the company that hired it. Intents received in calendar 2025:

Because each intent links a subcontractor to the firm that hired it, the file maps who subcontracts to whom on public jobs. Across all construction, the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey estimates Washington authorized 34,913 new housing units in 2025, down from 37,778 in 2024; units in buildings of five or more were 15,001, close to the 17,780 single-family units.

How to check a Washington contractor

1. Verify the registration in L&I's Verify tool, searchable by name, registration number, workers' comp account or UBI number, and check the bond and insurance records L&I publishes as separate open data files.
2. Check the debarment list before awarding public work; L&I publishes the contractors barred from public works.
3. For a public job, look up the firm's past intents in L&I's open data to see its recent public projects and who it worked for.
4. For electrical or plumbing work, confirm the separate L&I electrical or plumbing contractor license.

Selling to Washington contractors

The intents file is a list of contractors with a specific, recurring obligation: certified payroll every month on every public job. That makes it the best starting point for payroll, compliance, bonding and safety sellers. Our guide to building a prospect list covers turning an open data file into a clean list.

Illustrative example. The company, price and assumptions are invented; the counts are from L&I's 2025 intents data.

Cascade Certified Payroll (cascadepayroll.example) sells certified payroll software for public works. Its market is the 9,121 contractors that filed intents in 2025. If a third filed on five or more projects and do their payroll in spreadsheets, that's about 3,000 firms. Winning 3%, 90 accounts, at $2,400 a year each is $216,000 in annual subscriptions. The research that matters is which of those firms are growing their public work and which primes they work for. Bebop finds contractors that match a description like that and writes a playbook for each one.

Where to find names

Next step: build your list with the construction companies industry guide.